First some background on the motivation for, and goals, of my project. Back in 1996 a Russian materials scientist, named Evgeny Podkletnov, reported a .05% drop in the force of gravity above a spinning, high-temperature Superconductor (HTSC), levitated in an oscillating magnetic field. He was going to publish his find in Physica D, when it was abruptly leaked to the press. It set off a firestorm, and Podkletnov became a pariah and laughingstock in physics circles, since his claim violated basic tenets of General Relativity.
A few years later (1999-2001) Podkletnov, and a colleague, conducted further experiments along similar lines, and published their results in an online repository of physics papers. These experiments involved discharging several million volts between a HTSC and a target, in a partially evacuated chamber. They claimed that during these discharges a collimated force beam "gravitational impulse" was emitted that caused a pendulum with a rubber weight to be displaced.
It is this latter experiment that I am trying to approximately duplicate, but on a very much smaller scale in terms of apparatus size, voltages, currents, etc. Also, I am using a commercial piezoelectric accelerometer instead of a pendulum as the detector. My setup includes a high voltage source, which charges a capacitor bank, a thyristor and associated circuitry to dump the charge directly through a small 1 inch superconductor, (or through a surrounding coil), a voltmeter (to monitor the capacitor bank charge), and a 433 MHZ RF receiver module to remotely activate the charging and discharge cycles. All of the above, except the cryostat containing the superconductor and accelerometer with associated circuitry (encased in an aluminum bud box), are contained on the "Main Project Board".
One problem that plagued me from the start is that a loud 'pop' would emanate from the cryostat every time current was discharged through the superconductor, or surrounding coil, due, presumably, to the sudden expansion of the liquid nitrogen. The accelerometer positioned about 4 inches away, easily picks up this acoustic signal. Naturally, it spoils the experiment since it masks the sought for anomalous acceleration signal. But in Podkletnov's paper it's reported that the anomalous signal propagates at light speed, so I realized I could isolate the acoustic 'pop' just by the time-of-arrival at the detector.
So I put together a circuit using a 556 dual timer which introduces a 350 microsecond delay on the capacitor bank discharge from the moment the button on the transmitter is pressed. This allows the trace on my Textronix 465B scope (set for single sweep, 100 microsec./div.) to reach 3 and 1/2 divisions on the screen where the anomalous signal should appear (if it really exists), while the acoustic impulse should show up approximately another 3 and 1/2 divisions further along.
This concept worked fine when the trigger input to the scope came from the 1st channel output of the ULN2003AN decoding chip (pin 6), on the HD4RX 4 channel RF relay module on the Main Project Board. But when I attempted to sync the scope using the same pin 6 on a second HD4RX module mounted on a separate board (to physically isolate the scope from the Main Project Board), it wouldn't synchronize. The only thing I can figure is that the two ULN2003AN chips have some built-in signal processing delays that is sufficiently different from one chip to the other to foul up the sync timing. Any ideas to solve this would be appreciated.
Here's my project's URL with photos: http://starflight1.freeyellow.com
A few years later (1999-2001) Podkletnov, and a colleague, conducted further experiments along similar lines, and published their results in an online repository of physics papers. These experiments involved discharging several million volts between a HTSC and a target, in a partially evacuated chamber. They claimed that during these discharges a collimated force beam "gravitational impulse" was emitted that caused a pendulum with a rubber weight to be displaced.
It is this latter experiment that I am trying to approximately duplicate, but on a very much smaller scale in terms of apparatus size, voltages, currents, etc. Also, I am using a commercial piezoelectric accelerometer instead of a pendulum as the detector. My setup includes a high voltage source, which charges a capacitor bank, a thyristor and associated circuitry to dump the charge directly through a small 1 inch superconductor, (or through a surrounding coil), a voltmeter (to monitor the capacitor bank charge), and a 433 MHZ RF receiver module to remotely activate the charging and discharge cycles. All of the above, except the cryostat containing the superconductor and accelerometer with associated circuitry (encased in an aluminum bud box), are contained on the "Main Project Board".
One problem that plagued me from the start is that a loud 'pop' would emanate from the cryostat every time current was discharged through the superconductor, or surrounding coil, due, presumably, to the sudden expansion of the liquid nitrogen. The accelerometer positioned about 4 inches away, easily picks up this acoustic signal. Naturally, it spoils the experiment since it masks the sought for anomalous acceleration signal. But in Podkletnov's paper it's reported that the anomalous signal propagates at light speed, so I realized I could isolate the acoustic 'pop' just by the time-of-arrival at the detector.
So I put together a circuit using a 556 dual timer which introduces a 350 microsecond delay on the capacitor bank discharge from the moment the button on the transmitter is pressed. This allows the trace on my Textronix 465B scope (set for single sweep, 100 microsec./div.) to reach 3 and 1/2 divisions on the screen where the anomalous signal should appear (if it really exists), while the acoustic impulse should show up approximately another 3 and 1/2 divisions further along.
This concept worked fine when the trigger input to the scope came from the 1st channel output of the ULN2003AN decoding chip (pin 6), on the HD4RX 4 channel RF relay module on the Main Project Board. But when I attempted to sync the scope using the same pin 6 on a second HD4RX module mounted on a separate board (to physically isolate the scope from the Main Project Board), it wouldn't synchronize. The only thing I can figure is that the two ULN2003AN chips have some built-in signal processing delays that is sufficiently different from one chip to the other to foul up the sync timing. Any ideas to solve this would be appreciated.
Here's my project's URL with photos: http://starflight1.freeyellow.com